Ring of fire II (assiti shards)

by Eric Flint

  "You're telling me that you…? Right there?"

  "Yeah, that's what I'm telling you. A couple of times, Ma got home before we came back out of my room. The first time, Pat just froze. I don't know what she expected. I introduced them to each other. Ma said, 'pleased to meet you.' Pat barely managed to nod. When we got into the car, she was trembling like a leaf. And I thought that if she was that afraid of her own parents, it must be some house to live in.

  "Once I went into the army, we wrote. That had to be sneaked, too. Our go-between was Jeannette Adducci, Tony's aunt. She was the next-to-the youngest of ten, so her parents didn't watch her so closely that she couldn't mail Pat's letters for her or pick up mine to deliver to Pat. I'd rented a box at the post office in my name, so I addressed the letters to myself. And the end of that year, '64, when she turned eighteen, Pat picked up her courage and caught the bus for Leavenworth."

  Dennis got up. "I should have married her then, but I couldn't bring myself to sign those promises to have any kids we had brought up Catholic. I'm sorry if that bothers you, since she brought you up Catholic, but it's the truth. And she didn't think that being married except by a priest was different from not being married at all. You pretty much know the rest of it by now."

  "I suppose so." Noelle put the lid back on the butter dish.

  "Except, maybe, that I loved her so much that it hurt. After I'd gotten to know her a little, not just look at her, she was so sweet. She still is. She can't stand the thought of hurting her worst enemy. That's what Bernadette says. That her sins have almost all been of omission rather than of commission, the way the Catholics put it. Not being able to bring herself to do what she needed to."

  "She tried," Noelle picked up the butter and put it back in the refrigerator. "Most of the time, anyway."

  Dennis looked down. "Sometimes, they weren't her sins. I sinned against her, too, the way the Lord's Prayer says. Not the sex thing. I don't regret that for a minute. More important things. When she did try, not having the person listen who should have listened. That first time she came over to Clarksburg, after I got back from 'Nam, I should have kept her there. Or if not the first time she came, the second. Or third, or fourth, or fifth, or sixth. I'll never get over blaming myself that I didn't. She tried to tell me what was going on. I let her down bad. I should never have let her go back to Grantville that spring of '68. I knew in my heart how much she was afraid of them.

  "But I thought it would play out the way she promised the last time she left. That on the morning she was supposed to marry Francis, she would get in her car and go over to her classes in Fairmont and call me to say that everything was all right."

  "Okay. I got the testimony from the hearing at St. Mary's. I know what happened then." Noelle turned around and looked at him, her gray eyes measuring. Evaluating. Assessing. "Were you as single-minded about Mom as Joe seems to be about Aura Lee or Harlan about Eden?"

  Dennis looked back. Not a child. He was meeting this daughter as an adult. A daughter who would have to decide if she wanted to claim him.

  "I would have been if I'd had the chance. I was while I was over in 'Nam and she was waiting. The way things turned out… While she was married to Francis, there were seven or eight years when I regularly saw, and slept with, a divorcee over in Clarksburg. Eventually she met a guy who was interested in marrying her, which was the end of that. After Pat wouldn't divorce Francis even though she was expecting you, I was so disillusioned that I slept around for a while. A couple of years. Until I figured out that there was nothing in it for me, so I stopped."

  Noelle nodded.

  "Nobody Pat ever knew. Nobody she ever heard of, I hope. I tried to make sure of that. Then I dated a couple of other women. Didn't live with either of them. Never wanted to. One moved to Indiana with a job transfer after four years. The other lasted quite a while. The Ring of Fire left her in Clarksburg. That's the chronicle of my misspent years. Abbreviated version more than unexpurgated, but the truth. Not that I'm particularly proud of what I did, either. Of the way I handled things. But if I'd spent all those years thinking about the fact that I couldn't have Pat, it would have driven me crazy."

  "Thanks for being honest."

  "You're welcome. I'd prefer that nobody ever rub her nose in that."

  "Yeah. I guess I can understand where you're coming from. I'd never deliberately do anything to hurt Mom."

  "Well," Dennis said a couple of days later. "You could think about it again. That is, since we're going to the bank and putting your name on the records, you could think about what name you want on the papers."

  "Yeah. I'll do that. Well, not just think about it. Do it. I told Tony and Denise and Bernadette a couple of weeks ago that I had wanted to get rid of 'Murphy' for a long time. But I wouldn't have asked to use 'Stull' unless you all invited me. I didn't want to be pushy."

  Dennis looked at her. It hadn't occurred to him that she might be a little afraid of offending them. Thinking that they were measuring and evaluating her. She always seemed so composed. Reserved. Collected.

  "Joe said that you told him and Tony that you had talked to Ma a few times."

  "Yeah. I did." She looked away. "I hope you don't mind."

  "Not a bit."

  "I don't know if Mom has said anything to you about it, but Patrick and Mary Liz Fitzgerald never let me in their house any more than the Murphys did. I never met them. Won't ever meet Patrick, since he's dead now. Probably won't ever meet Mary Liz, given the things she said about you and Mom at the hearing at St. Mary's."

  "Pat never said anything."

  "She wouldn't. But she thought she ought to take the other girls to see them sometimes. Not as often as she took them to Paul and Maggie's, though. Nowhere near. But maybe that was more so she could see Keenan at Paul and Maggie's." Noelle looked across the table at him. "She feels pretty bad about Keenan, you know."

  "She hasn't said anything about that, either."

  "She does. She thinks she let him down." Noelle took a sip of coffee. She didn't really like it; hadn't ever acquired a taste for it. But it was there in front of her and fiddling with the handle of the cup gave her something to do with her hands.

  "But that's really why I never changed my name to Fitzgerald. I wanted to get rid of Murphy. I had wanted to get rid of Murphy for a long time. But even though it was Mom's maiden name, the Fitzgeralds didn't want me, either. The only ones who did were Denise and Suzanne and they go by their married names."

  Dennis realized that she was working up to something, but he wasn't sure what. With employees, the best approach was just to keep his mouth shut and listen, so that was what he did next.

  "So she-Juliann-was the only one of my grandparents I ever met."

  "Oh."

  "The first time I walked up to the door, I called her 'Mrs. Stull.' But she said that no one much called her that."

  "Nope. Not even the garbage collector."

  "So, for a long while, I didn't call her anything." Noelle started spinning the coffee cup slowly around in its saucer.

  Dennis just stayed quiet.

  "Toward the end, she asked me to call her 'Grandma.' Like Harlan does."

  Dennis nodded.

  "I wish I hadn't been off in Franconia for so long before she died."

  "Things like that happen."

  "Yeah."

  "Did you?" Dennis asked.

  "What?"

  "Call her 'Grandma'?"

  Noelle shook her head. "I just couldn't, quite. Maybe, eventually, I could have worked up to it. But not then. I called her Juliann."

  "If that's easier for you. So far, you haven't called me anything."

  "I could probably manage 'Dennis.' "

  "That's better than nothing."

  "Okay, then." Noelle shook his hand.

  "Changing your name doesn't take a court order anymore. The judges are too busy with more important stuff." The clerk pointed her finger in the general direction of Central Funeral Home. "Just go over to the
Bureau of Vital Statistics, tell them what you want, swear an affidavit that you aren't doing it for fraudulent purposes, get it notarized, file it, and Bob's your uncle. There are a couple of notaries working right there in the office."

  "Noelle Brigitte Murphy?" the clerk asked in a flat voice.

  "Yes," Noelle said.

  "Changing to Noelle Brigitte Stull?" The clerk fished a form out from under the counter.

  "Yes, that's right."

  Noelle looked at Pat and Dennis. " 'Noelle' I can understand, since I was born at Christmas. But where did 'Brigitte' come from?"

  Pat turned bright red. "It's for me. In a way. I hope the priest thought it was for a saint, but it's for me."

  "How do you get 'Brigitte' from 'Patricia'?"

  "Hey there," Jenny Maddox came out of the back office. "Hello, Pat, Dennis, Noelle. Focus. We have forms to fill out, I hear."

  "Hi, Jenny," Pat said.

  "Did I hear a question? Getting Brigitte from Pat?"

  Noelle nodded.

  "This I know from my parents." Jenny looked mischievous. "Dad and Mom and Dennis were friends back then-he and Mom were in the same class in school."

  "I guess there's no escaping my past," Dennis said.

  Jenny barged on. "Noelle, did you ever hear of an actress called Brigitte Bardot?"

  "No."

  "Well, probably not. She'd stopped making movies long before you were born. Tell her the truth, Dennis," Jenny said.

  Dennis looked a little uncomfortable. "When Pat was a teenager, when we were dating, I used to tease her by calling her Brigitte."

  "Please," Pat said. "Don't ask." If anything, she turned redder. Her skin was very fair.

  So Noelle didn't ask. But she did look the name up later. And blushed as red as Pat by the time she was done with the biographical sketch. Being named, even second-hand, for someone whose life history was summed up under the keywords "erotic French sex kitten" just didn't seem to be the proper image for a would-be nun.

  "Um, Bernadette," she asked a couple of days later. "Did you ever hear of Brigitte Bardot?"

  "Yep," Bernadette answered tersely.

  "When we went in to do the name change. Ah, Dennis says that's what he called Mom when she was a teenager. Brigitte. She gave the name to me when I was baptized. For her. Because Patty was already named Patricia, I guess."

  Bernadette looked at her. "Well, keep it in mind when you're thinking about whether or not you want to join a religious order."

  "What do you mean?"

  "You are Pat's daughter and he probably wasn't calling her that for no reason at all."

  "Uh?"

  "Look, Noelle." Bernadette tried to keep her voice kind rather than brusque. "Nowhere in all that testimony before Judge Tito and Tom Riddle or at the hearing over at St. Mary's did anybody so much as hint that Dennis and Pat waited until they were out in Leavenworth with his dime-store rings on her finger to start sleeping together."

  "Oh." Noelle paused a moment. "Well, I guess that wouldn't have been likely. From what I've learned about Dennis' family so far. Actually, Dennis told me that they didn't wait that long. When I asked him about it. It would have embarrassed Mom if I asked her."

  "I'm sure it would," Bernadette agreed. "And if you're even thinking about becoming a nun, Noelle, you might give some consideration to what she was doing then that would embarrass her so much if you asked her about it now."

  And after that, Bernadette said to herself, you'd better think again.

  The Austro-Hungarian Connection

  Eric Flint

  Chapter 1. The Track

  Vienna, Austria

  October 1634

  Fortunately, that part of Janos Drugeth's mind that always remained calm and controlled, even in the fury of a battlefield, was still there to restrain his panic. Indeed, it found the panic itself unseemly.

  You are a Hungarian cavalry officer in the service of the Austrian emperor, that part of his mind informed Janos sternly. A breed noted for its valor.

  It was all Janos could do not to snarl "so what?" aloud. He was not facing the familiar terrors of war.

  You are not even unaccustomed to this, the stern inner voice continued. You have ridden in automobiles before. In Grantville. Several times. Just a few months ago.

  Janos' grip on the handrest of his door to the vehicle grew tighter still. He was sitting on what Americans called the "passenger side" of the automobile. They also sometimes referred to it as "riding shotgun," he'd been told, a phrase that didn't seem to make any more sense than many of the up-timers' expressions.

  True. He had. Four times, in fact, with three different operators.

  But, first, those vehicles had been driven by Americans very familiar with their operation. All three of them filled with the sobriety of age, to boot. Not a young Austrian emperor whose personal acquaintance with automobiles was this one, and no other. The cursed thing had just arrived in Vienna the month before, not long before Janos himself returned from his inspection of the frontier forts facing the Turks.

  Second, two of the vehicles had been large and stately things, moving not much faster than a horse and stopping frequently. What the up-timers called "buses." The third had been a "pickup" filled with people in the open area in the back, which moved not much faster than the buses. And the fourth had been large and roomy, almost the size of a proper coach if much lower-built, whose operator had been an elderly woman.

  None of them had been a so-called "sports car" driven by a maniacal down-time monarch. Nor had any of them been driven on a ridiculous oval-shaped course freshly prepared for the purpose at the command of the crazed king in question. Ferdinand called it a "race track." The term was English, and unfamiliar to Janos. But his command of the language was almost fluent now, and he could easily determine its inner logic. Its frightening inner logic.

  The automobile skidded around another curve in the race track. The rear wheels lost their grip on the surface, just as Janos had known carts to do on slippery cobblestones during a rain or in mud. But the carts had been moving slowly, not at-his eyes locked on the "speedometer" and froze at the sight-sixty miles an hour. The phrase didn't have a precise meaning to Janos, but he knew that was far faster than he'd ever seen an American drive such a contraption. And even at slow speeds, such a mishap could easily cause a sturdy down-time cart to break a wheel or axle.

  The slide continued, the vehicle now clearly out of control. Janos clenched his teeth, his grip on the armrest as tight as he'd ever gripped a sword hilt or a lance on a battlefield. Under his breath, he began muttering the same prayer that he always muttered when a cavalry charge he was leading neared the enemy and his own death might be upon him, commending his soul to the Virgin's care. "Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum…"

  Fortunately, the muttered words were covered up by Ferdinand's squeal of glee. Fortunately also, while Ferdinand might be portly, he was young and had good reflexes. He turned the round steering mechanism abruptly-in the direction of the slide, oddly-and within seconds the vehicle had resumed its steady and straightforward course. They were still going at an insane speed, but at least the king now had the automobile back under control. And apparently they'd broken neither a wheel nor an axle.

  Ferdinand squealed his glee again. "Ha!" He glanced at Janos, grinning. "I learned that trick from Sanderlin. It's not like a horse-drawn carriage, you know. The worst thing you can do in a skid is apply the brakes. That means restraining the mechanical horses under the hood." His right hand released the control mechanism and his forefinger pointed to the smooth dark-blue metal expanse in front of the window. "That's the hood, by the way. It's hard to believe, but there are more than two hundred mechanical horses in there."

  To Drugeth's relief, the king had slowed the vehicle considerably. Ferdinand glanced at him again, still grinning. "Congratulations, Janos. You're the first person who's ridden with me on the track who hasn't said a word. Screamed a word, usually-and in the case of my wife and sis
ter, cursed me directly."

  Drugeth tried to return the grin. The result, he suspected, was simply a rictus. "Perhaps they were not cavalry officers." He managed to relinquish his grip on the armrest and slap his chest. "And Hungarian, too! We are a bold breed."

  Ferdinand chuckled-and, praise the saints, continued to let the automobile's speed decline. "The first, no. You are the only cavalry officer to ride with me. The second explanation, I'm afraid, doesn't withstand scrutiny. Your uncle Pal Nadasdy has ridden with me, and I can assure you the hisses and screeches of terror he produced were no less profound than any German's."

  They were nearing the stablelike building that the king had ordered constructed at the center point of one of the two long stretches on the oval track. What Ferdinand called by the English term "the straightaways," another expression that was unfamiliar to Janos but whose inner logic was clear enough. Three men were emerging from the very large and open double doors, holding some sort of tools and wearing peculiar one-piece garments.

  The distinctive clothing went by the English name of "jumpsuits" and would have been enough in themselves to identify the men. But Janos had excellent eyesight, and recognized them even at a distance. The one in the center was Ronald Sanderlin, Jr., the up-timer who'd sold the automobile to the Austrian king and had agreed to move to Vienna to maintain it for him. He'd brought his wife and two children with him, although Janos didn't know their names. Drugeth estimated his age at being somewhere in the mid-thirties, although such estimates were always tricky with Americans. You simply couldn't use the easy gauge of the condition of their teeth.